The local concert series that began in 2018, and recovered from a COVID-forced intermission, is continuing through the New Year and early winter months of 2024.

Matt Miner began producing concerts for Northwind Arts two years before the pandemic, in the Jeanette Best gallery in downtown Port Townsend, while also producing the grant-funded “Arts to Elders” series, in senior care residences throughout town.

According to Miner, COVID was initially responsible for shutting down those shows, and after Northwind Arts merged with the Port Townsend School of the Arts, they declined to continue performing arts programs that included the concert series.

Miner credited Everett Moran, owner and engineer of Rainshadow Recording in Port Townsend, with helping to reestablish the concert series at the Palindrome at Eaglemount Cidery, at 1893 S. Jacob Miller Rd. in Port Townsend, mostly featuring touring small bands and singer-songwriters.

“The first almost-post-pandemic show that Everett and I collaborated on was July 9, 2021, outside on the lawn next to the Rainshadow Recording Studio, at Fort Worden State Park,” Miner said. “We did several shows there, while the weather held, then a couple at the Joseph F. Wheeler theater, also at Fort Worden, before starting our current run at the Palindrome Jan. 28, 2022. By my calculations, we’ve done 53 shows there.”

Miner considers the highlight of this year to have been the sellout show for “legendary” rock guitarist Albert Lee, on the warm evening of July 19, acknowledging it was “not really consistent with our usual fare of acoustic performers.”

For a while, Miner and Moran were presenting two shows a month, with this November featuring not only British duo The Black Feathers, but also Grammy-winning Nashville fiddler, and recent Lyle Lovett band member, Luke Bulla, before Dec. 3 showcased Texas guitar-slinger, and recent transplant to Vancouver Island, Jeff Plankenhorn

Miner touted two “wonderful” returning acts in January and February, starting with The Faux Paws, “a mesmerizing but almost indescribable mix” of traditional bluegrass instrumentation on Jan. 21, with local musician Chris Miller on saxophone and other instruments, before singer-songwriter Tracy Grammer returns Feb. 2 with her growing collection of original songs, plus some tunes from the catalog of compositions that “helped create the legend she shared” with the late Dave Carter.

Grammar last performed at the Palindrome that same time in 2023, as part of her annual West Coast tour, which recently came to include the “Winterfolk” benefit concert in Portland.

“She has a beautifully expressive voice,” Miner said. “Such artists could be described as ‘middle-class’ performers, but they’re every bit as talented and charismatic as superstars like Paul Simon, James Taylor or Carole King. They just either never got the same breaks, or else chose to take a less glamorous artistic path.”

Miner takes pride in having provided a venue for musical artists who “don’t have big major-label contracts, or play massive arenas,” and instead “tour the country by economy class, in rental cars, and stay with friends rather than in hotels, playing bars and living rooms, making their living show-by-show, and by selling CDs out of the trunks of their cars.”

Nonetheless, Miner touted such artists as being just as capable as their big-name peers at “holding an audience in their hands, and mesmerizing them with enchanting melodies and thought-provoking lyrics. And because they’re accustomed to more intimate venues, they can connect more directly and personally with their audiences, who leave those shows feeling like they’ve not just discovered a new talent, but made a new friend.”